


"I can't be sick. You're here to visit."

by MerryArwen (lalaietha)



Series: Is This Your Card? [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/MerryArwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The morning of the second weekend Spencer came to visit, Austin woke up with a pounding headache and an ominous scratchiness in her throat, about an hour before she needed to leave to pick him up from the airport.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	"I can't be sick. You're here to visit."

**Author's Note:**

> Written to mesh with a friend's personal canon, wherein Reid and Austin (the bartender from "52 Pickup") have been quietly dating since she sent his card back. Takes place about two months after "52 Pickup".

The morning of the second weekend Spencer came to visit, Austin woke up with a pounding headache and an ominous scratchiness in her throat, about an hour before she needed to leave to pick him up from the airport. She dragged herself out of bed and glared resentfully at her reflection in the mirror before taking a quick, really hot shower and downing some DayQuil.

Her apartment was still clean. She made her bed, flicked off the lights, chased Bart off the kitchen counter in the daily exercise in futility, and grabbed some coffee, and left.

She had to come back about thirty seconds later to get her keys, and the DayQuil wasn't doing much for her headache. She chased Bart off the kitchen counter again, this time with the spray-bottle, and forgot to lock the door behind her.

*****

It wasn't that Spencer's clothes were bad, exactly - at least, not all of them. He just didn't seem to have any sense of which parts of his wardrobe were bad, which ones weren't, and which ones went together. Every time she noticed this, she could hear Kathy in her head saying, Only you would find that cute, Austin.

Today, when he got off the plane, she almost didn't notice that his vest really didn't go with his shirt, though, because she was busy trying not to cough. She smiled and waved to catch his attention as he wandered out of Arrivals into the baggage claim, trailing his carry-on bag behind her; apparently he never checked luggage if he could help it. And it was nice to have someone whose face lit up when he caught sight of her again. And to hug. He smelled like coffee, the plane, and Pert Plus shampoo.

Then the hug sort of . . . . paused, halfway through, and Spencer took her shoulders to move her where he could look at her. He had a little line between his eyebrows, and he said, "Austin, you have a fever."

"What?" she said. "Don't be sil - " and then she lost the battle with the cough for a bit. Which ripped the hell out of her throat, and didn't help the headache. Dammit.

Spencer was looking at her, with his head tilted to one side and his thoughtful look on. (You learned to recognize that look really fast, with Spencer Reid). He put the back of his hand on her forehead, when she'd finished coughing and was swallowing what she'd coughed up down (and, ew, she could only think), and said, "You totally have a fever. Probably over a hundred. Which means I should probably drive."

"I totally don't have a fever," Austin protested. "I can't have a fever, you're here to visit and I have the weekend off."

"Neither of these conditions actually precludes you having a fever," Spencer replied, and held out his hand for the keys. Austin handed them over - but she wasn't sick, damn it, and she said so.

"You just want to drive," she said. "Guys always want to drive. Don't they ever let you drive at work?"

"Not that much, actually," Spencer replied, distracted. "Usually Morgan drives. I don't know why they always let him drive, considering how lost he gets us, but it's usually not worth arguing about."

He was a bit awkward about holding hands as they walked out, at first, but he got used to it again quick. He told her about how the new computer upgrades had crashed everyone's system except his team's (because Penelope Garcia fixed their computers), and she told him about how working at a non-profit was occasionally funnier than drunk clowns at the circus.

And she only coughed once, and she was pretty sure the headache was going away. Because she wasn't sick, damn it - maybe a little cold, but she could just take more cold meds, and it would be fine. Her boyfriend was visiting for the weekend: she was not going to spend it sick.

*****

"Hey, Austin?" Spencer's voice intruded into the dream about trying to get the monkeys out of her old bar before they broke the glass wedding cake. "We're here."

"Whuh?" she said, bleary, headache back full-force and throat trying to compete with it. She sat up and rubbed at her eyes. "Oh. Sorry. Right. Keys." She dug them out of her purse and undid her seatbelt to get out of the car. She felt a little dizzy, and Spencer didn't say anything as he got his suit-case out of the back. She unlocked the building, and then tried to unlock the apartment before she realized she hadn't locked it.

Bart was on the counter again when they came in the apartment. Spencer locked the deadbolt behind them, put his coat and his suitcase down and said, "Austin, I think you have the flu."

"No." Austin shook her head. Her voice was a bit scratchy, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "No, I don't have the flu."

"You have a fever, you have a cough, and I bet you have a sore throat," Spencer said, in an implacably reasonable sort of voice. "You fell asleep in the car and I bet you're dizzy, too." His hands were in his pockets, and he had his totally reasonable expression on his face, too.

Austin said, "I can't be sick, you're here to visit," but it came out more plaintive than sure, and she started coughing again.

"I can still visit even if you're sick," Spencer replied, and sort of took her by the shoulders and steered her towards the living room and the couch. He swatted Bart off the counter as they passed, apparently remembering from last time.

"But it's supposed to be fun girlfriend visiting vacation," Austin protested again, when she sat down. Spencer darted into her room while she had another coughing fit, and came out with NyQuil instead of DayQuil.

"Trust me," Spencer replied, "two and a half days of not being in Quantico and spending time with you is just fine as a vacation, even if you're sick - here, take this." He gave her the NyQuil and went and got a glass of water. Then he grabbed a blanket, while she swallowed that and coughed again.

"But I'll get you sick - " she started.

"Had my flu-shot," he said. Austin made a guilty face: she'd meant to get one of those. She really had. Spencer put another, really big glass of water on the table. "You'd probably be more comfortable without the jeans," he noted, and then unzipped his bag and dug something out of his bag.

Austin figured she probably had, as a boyfriend, the only guy in the world that could say something like that and not have it be awkward. Mostly because it just wouldn't occur to him that it should be. He was right, too, and she undid her belt and kicked off her jeans onto the floor, slowly surrendering to the fact that she felt like Hell warmed over and served on cold, soggy toast. Guilt was harder to let go of, but Spencer just grabbed a Coke out of her fridge and came and sat down on the other side of the couch with his body sort of open and his arm over the back in a pretty clear invitation to curl up there.

Austin's sick body informed Austin that that sounded like a pretty fantastic fucking idea, and she gave up. With one hand over her mouth for the coughing, she used the other to grab the blanket and pulled it over, using Spencer's lap as a pillow.

The thing he'd grabbed out of the was a book, with - Queen Elizabeth I on the cover? "What's that?" she asked.

"The first book of a duology that imagines William Shakespeare as a member of a secret club of magicians trying to keep Elizabeth the First on the throne," Spencer replied. "The author won a Hugo for a short-story last year, and Emily got me the book - I haven't had a chance to look at it yet."

He rested his free hand on her shoulder, and Austin sighed. "I'm sorry," she said, and he squeezed her shoulder once, gently.

"It's really okay," he said. "You should get some rest."


End file.
